


big dipper

by deniigiq



Series: Selkie Verse [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Deal-making, Fae & Fairies, Gen, M/M, an oncoming plot even perhaps, exchanges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22194622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: He could remember the weight of Bucky’s newly formed hands and knees pressing down on the blanket a whole foot away from his own. He could remember his mother’s voice murmuring. Begging. Telling Bucky that he was a beautiful thing, but Steve was a fragile one. And she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready.“Give him to me for just a bit longer,” she’d pleaded of Buck. “I know he’s a wee thing, but he’s my wee thing and I don’t have much else.”Bucky had turned mineral eyes onto Steve then.One silver. One gold.(Steve sets out to help Bucky get his hound form back. He makes a deal with a selkie in Hell's Kitchen to do it.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Matt Murdock & Maggie Murdock
Series: Selkie Verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558045
Comments: 25
Kudos: 307





	big dipper

**Author's Note:**

> i may have accidentally stumbled upon a plot for this verse.  
> this was unexpected.

Ma always used to say that Steve was a child of the island and the sea just as he was a child of New York. This was a kind way of saying that he’d been conceived in a barn in Ireland before Ma and Dad had packed up their cookies and caught a ship to the New World, where work was plenty and the shadows of famine less prominent.

Or so they’d thought, anyways.

Turns out shadows of famine are sticky little buggers.

Steve didn’t have to think much of them these days, but he could still feel them sometimes when a pack of dried beans spilled across the kitchen’s tile counters. Now, if the beans ever spilled, out of habit, he set out a couple in the window sills in the living room and cracked the glass.

Letting those who needed the beans have them, Ma always said, was how their family had gotten through the hard times in generations past.

The Rogers and Greens had been united in this. They’d always found a couple of beans to spare for the _fae_ , even when the going was tough and only getting tougher.

Ma used to say these beans were one of the reasons why Bucky had given Steve some extra time all those years ago.

Steve could still remember some hazy negotiations between those other two at the end of his bed when he’d been too small to fit in it. He could remember the weight of Bucky’s newly formed hands and knees pressing down on the blanket a whole foot away from his own. He could remember his mother’s voice murmuring. Begging. Telling Bucky that he was a beautiful thing, but Steve was a fragile one. And she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready.

“Give him to me for just a bit longer,” she’d pleaded of Buck. “I know he’s a wee thing, but he’s my wee thing and I don’t have much else.”

Bucky had turned mineral eyes onto Steve then.

One silver.

One gold.

He’d spoken in Irish. The words had been comforting, even though they’d felt like a cold rush of wind.

“For now,” Bucky had said. “I will give you two days in return for a lock of hair.”

Ma had given it.

Two days later, Bucky had returned.

And two days later.

And two days later.

Eventually, he stopped asking for anything at all.

Until one day, he came and settled at the foot of Steve’s been with bare hands and bare feet and bare knees and said to Ma, with one silver eye and one gold, that he was scared.

He’d been little like Steve. Skinny like Steve.

His people lived only three blocks away.

They were all dark shaggy dogs with long white tails and broad, always dirty hands. They were dock people during the day and dogs at night. Their nails clicked while they ran, but Bucky was scared because his hands wouldn’t change into claws or paws anymore and he didn’t know how to tell his Mama.

Ma had shushed and soothed him and pulled him into her arms like she did with Steve all the time.

Bucky asked her in Irish what would happen if his hands never changed to paws ever again. What would happen if his feet wouldn’t change next?

What if he got stuck as a human while the rest of his people swept through the night?

He couldn’t keep up with them running on only two feet.

Ma had rocked Bucky back and forth, promising him that if he couldn’t run with his own people one day, then he would always have she and Steve to walk with. One day, she said, his hands would change again.

One day.

Ma died.

Bucky held one of her hands while Steve wheezed mourning breaths out against the other.

Bucky took her that same night, dressed all in white and wavering as grass and leaves in the sea, out to the ocean. He’d guided her by the hand to the side of an older _c_ _ú sidhe_ , who was headed off across the surface of the sea towards the Afterworld.

He’d come back in to Steve, still settled by Ma’s body, still holding her hand, and had said with gold and silver eyes that she said that she loved him. That she was sorry. That she’d gone proudly and peacefully at the side of an elder.

Bucky had made sure to take her to an elder of his kind. A gentle one. A woman who lived about half a mile away down by the docks in a house that was half-collapsed by floodwater.

Steve could not be more grateful. He’d flung arms around Bucky’s strong neck and had sobbed there, making the skin hot and wet, and Bucky had let him.

His hands hadn’t been dirty. Not for a while now.

He’d laid them flat against Steve’s sharp shoulder blades. And he told Steve that he’d be with him too, to the end of the line.

It came and went. Over and over.

Steve found the end of the line and Bucky met him at it.

Steve found another end and Bucky chased him right to the last thread of the rope and caught Steve’s grasping, stretching fingers before they ran out of length.

Then things got confused and Bucky’s fingers became the ones running out of thread and Steve threw his everything into catching ahold of the rope before they did.

And then, a few years ago, just as Steve’s fingers were slipping from sweat and nerves and exertion, Sam’s warm skin and bones came flying out to wrap over them.

The end of the line had never been held so firmly.

Sam didn’t know what Bucky was.

He thought he was a soldier. He thought he was a weapon. A former lab-experiment.

He thought all that shit even as he watched Steve leave out the beans and set saucers of milk at the corners of doorframes. As far as Steve could read into Sam’s brown eyes, Sam thought that these quirks were the remnants of old habits and superstitions.

He understood superstitions. He was a soldier himself.

But if he knew that Steve was dead serious here and that Bucky’s eyes weren’t as blue or grey as they looked, Steve didn’t know what he would do.

He wouldn’t leave, that was for sure. Sam wasn’t that kind of person. But he would probably have some questions.

A lot of questions.

One of the first ones would definitely be: wait, are we mutually fucking a dog?

Steve knew Sam.

He also knew Bucky.

This conversation would not only never end well, but it would flat out never end.

Sam would let this go not even upon his deathbed. Bucky could shepherd him from said deathbed and Sam would still be calling him ‘Fido’ and making kissy noises.

It was going to be rough going. For Buck, obviously. Not for Steve. Steve was fine. Steve was chill. Steve might have accidently bonded himself to a _c_ _ú sidhe_ for the rest of his existence and might have fucked up said _c_ _ú sidhe_ badly enough to be viewed by enemies of their kind as a hero, but besides that?

He’d never been better.

No, see, the problem here was Buck.

Because Bucky, for all the spirits of the sea whirling around in his head and occasionally providing him with stunning insight and strategic ability, had gone and pissed off a selkie.

And not just any fucking selkie.

 _The_ selkie.

The one who everyone who was anyone was talking about.

Steve didn’t know many _fae_ and he couldn’t always see them, but he could sense them and hear them chattering in the streets and in the quiet places as he passed them, and everyone was talking about this new selkie who was rising up, up, up in the ranks of the sea _fae_ in the city.

His name was Foggy, the spirits all said.

JB came home with a set of pliers and announced that he’d found this selkie and boy, had he fucked up in doing that.

‘Foggy’ was a name befitting of a selkie. It was not, however, a name befitting of a lawyer.

Their lawyer.

Steve asked every ceiling in the house what he’d done to be given just enough of the Sight and Sense to get himself into trouble and not enough to recognize a goddamn selkie when he was standing right in front of him, getting Bucky out of jail.

Steve was distressed.

He was compromised.

So when Sam asked him why he was talking to himself and if the situation perhaps required a reality-check or maybe some deep breathing exercises, he blurted some shit out that he shouldn’t have.

And now Buck wasn’t talking to him, but he was sending him fierce glares. And he was threatening to reap his soul every time they got out of Sam’s earshot.

So, you know.

It happened.

“Just shut up and yank my goddamn tooth already, Steven,” Bucky finally snapped when he tried to apologize. He forced his newly sanitized pliers into Steve’s hand.

It turned out that Barton, who had been given the first opportunity for some tooth-yanking, had learned their friendly, not-so-neighborhood lawyer’s species recently as well. He didn’t understand the _fae_ and he was having nothing to do with no tooth-pullin’, no fucking sir.

This was unusually wise of Clint. Steve was proud of him.

“Why can’t I see Nelson as a selkie?” He demanded, accepting then pressing the pliers into his hip.

“’Cause he’s got a damn good glimmer,” Buck growled. “Tooth. Out. Now-ish, please.”

“Why’re you giving him a tooth? Isn’t that a bit much for an accident?”

“You don’t fuck with a selkie’s flute,” Bucky said. “And I let Barton’s beast fuck with the flute, so now it’s a tooth for a tooth.”

Steve didn’t understand.

Bucky showed him an amulet thing Nelson had apparently scrounged up for him.

“He gave one of his own teeth for this,” he said. “My teeth are somethin’, yeah, but selkie teeth? Hoo boy, they don’t give those things up easy. Powder ‘em and you’ve got the base of a fuckload of poisons.”

…so don’t get bit by a selkie, that was what Steve was hearing here.

“No, dipshit. If you get bit by a selkie, the teeth are the least of your problems. They’ll drag your ass down under the surface and drown you in a heartbeat. We’re lucky that Nelson’s a pretty unflappable kind of guy. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of wrath in him. Shit’s unusual for his kind. But he gave a tooth for me and he wants a tooth for his flute, so he’ll have one, alright?”

“Okay, whatever, fine,” Steve said. “But what’s he gonna do with it? And why’d he give you this thing to begin with?”

The amulet was a piece of black, smooth rock with a hole in the middle like someone had once considered making it a ring but had gotten tired after the first round of drilling. It was held to Bucky’s wrist by a red ribbon.

Bucky looked guilty and said he’d explain after Steve pulled his damn tooth.

Sam came in mid-tooth-extraction and had a bit of a moment.

He wouldn’t let Steve do it. If someone in their posse had to do it, he argued it would be the one with the most medical training.

Buck slammed a fist against the counter when the tooth came free under Sam’s knowledgeable hand and through a mouth of blood, admitted to Steve and Sam that he was trying to find a way to shift into a dog again.

His bones hurt having gone so long without it. The cries of the scared and dying kept him up at night. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. The guilt was too much. All these souls were being left to wander for themselves without any _c_ _ú sidhe_ in this area.

They might wander for days before some other reaper swept them up and god knew where that reaper was taking them and what kind of care they received along the way.

Sam then called a time-out for a quick and dirty crash course in the ways of the _fae_ and their opinions on hospitality and fair treatment.

This accomplished, he then immediately wanted to know which _fae_ took the beans at night, and, unsatisfied with Steve’s shrug and Bucky’s ‘whoever wants ‘em’, he plowed on to demand to know what the fuck a selkie was and how he could sweet talk one into showing him its true form.

The answer to that last question, according to Bucky, was ‘piss ‘em off, and we ain’t doing that shit again.’

“Nelson said he can’t help me beyond what he’s already offered,” Bucky sighed, rinsing off his tooth in the sink. “I mean, the guy’s been burned now, so that’s fair. But he’s sayin’ I should talk to my elders, and I can’t find any of ‘em around here anymore. I dunno where they all went, Steve; there used to be four or five of them back in our time. They must have moved on with their families or something. I dunno what to do next.”

Sam deferred to Steve. Steve bit his lip.

“Maybe someone else might know?” he offered. “Another _fae_?”

Bucky sighed again, even hard this time.

He looked tired the way he had when he’d had a nightmare about being the Soldier. Steve hated that face with all his being.

It remined him of a fraying rope. Of a road paint ground off into cracking, black asphalt.

Bucky’s bare hands and knees had grown into something they never should have because of Steve. He was almost unrecognizable from that wild and dirty little thing that had crept up onto the foot of Steve’s bed as a child.

Only his hair had grown back into its original mane.

His eyes hadn’t shone silver and gold in years. He was so tame. Domesticated. Forced into armor by a load of Russian operatives and then sunk into submission by HYDRA and Steve’s own failure to uphold his promises.

He deserved to be that living whirlwind again after all these years.

He deserved to have mineral eyes again.

If a selkie didn’t have the answers he was looking for, then someone else might. And Steve would find them, come hell or high water.

He dragged Sam kicking and screaming out with him to the bay with a new sense of purpose rising high in his chest, ballooning it out into something like confidence, and if not that, then determination.

Sam wanted to know why the ever-loving fuck they were going towards the water when clearly Buck’s problem was a land-loving one.

Steve told him that the land-loving problem could only be solved when the water-loving one expounded on his answer.

Steve refused to believe that a selkie—a rising selkie no less—would have no answer besides ‘go talk to your elders.’ That wasn’t good sense.

Selkies had all kind of secrets. Nelson might just need the right nudge in the right direction.

So when they got to the shoreline, Steve went and started digging around through rocks and pebbles until he found a piece of sea glass--a teal thing that looked like it had been chipped from a glacier and rounded out by tumbling around with a community of fellow stones.

Sam watched him hunt around for a while before throwing up his hands and bending down to join Steve in finding two other bits of glass.

As they went, Steve explained the system of offerings.

“The _fae_ work in exchanges,” he told Sam. “They give nothing without taking something and take nothing without giving in return. They exist to fill space and provide balance in the world where we can’t. So if you ever want to talk to them or if you ever need something from them, you need to present them with a gift or be prepared to offer a favor.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Sam relented. “But how do you know where to find them, Steve? Nelson lives in Hell’s Kitchen and even if he is swimmin’ around, preparing for battle with Free Willy or whatever, how is he supposed to know someone’s running around, shoutin’ his name?”

Honestly?

Steve didn’t know.

Steve had only ever left food and offerings out at night. They disappeared of their own volition. Actually calling a fairy to come directly to him wasn’t something he quite knew how to do. He knew you needed an offering, but beyond that was only questions.

What words do you use? What tone?

Was Irish better? Or would English suffice? Did they need to appeal to Nelson’s honor? Or was a ‘hi, we are very stupid and very confused, please help’ good enough?

“I’m going with the middle one,” Sam said. “Sounds mystic. Kinda cryptic. We just gotta channel last week’s demi-god asshole and we’re solid, yeah?”

Uh, maybe?

“Or we could get Thor,” Sam offered. “Better the demi-god asshole you know, I guess. He might know something about this. Seems like the kind of esoteric shit he’d be read up on.”

Steve could have fucking kissed him. He did kiss him, actually. For good measure and as a reward for brilliance.

Thor was stolen out of a conversation with Stark, who was offended but resigned to this being a common feature of their lives now. He sighed and went his own way as Steve dragged Thor with him out of the building and down towards the train.

Thor was in good spirits.

“A selkie?” he asked once Steve had explained everything with much hand waving down by the coast. He took it well. He didn’t question the dog thing even a bit.

“A selkie,” Steve confirmed. “Guy’s name is Franklin Nelson—you met him. A lawyer. Remember when Clint rolled that ambulance a couple months back?”

Thor remembered.

 _Everyone_ remembered.

“Same guy,” Steve said.

Thor jutted out a lip and nodded approvingly.

“A very practical selkie,” he said. “But why are you calling for such a creature out here? Surely it makes more sense to call for him in his own home?”

Er.

Well.

Uh.

Fuck.

Sam snickered.

Back onto the train they went. At least they’d found some sea glass round these parts as an offering.

Hell’s Kitchen had a set of docks attached to it. They trailed out into the river.

The Hudson River. Yeah, _that_ river.

“We need to buy Nelson a Brita filter,” Sam said, cringing at the toxic water.

“Selkies don’t always live in the sea,” Thor announced. The other two looked back at him and he shrugged. “In other parts of this world and others, they live in ponds and rivers,” he explained. “We’ve passed a surprising number of them just in these streets.”

What.

“Where?” Steve asked.

“Don’t you have brainworms for this?” Sam accused.

“The Sight’s not a brainworm, Sam,” Steve sniffed. “It’s a gift. And it’s not super accurate.”

Sam was not impressed.

“So what? You can see auras or something, Steven? We’ve been running all over hell and gone based on your _auras_?”

No.

Auras were something else.

Sam threw his hands up in the air.

Thor beamed at Steve like he was proud of him, though.

“Can you see them glimmering?” he asked.

Yes. Well, kind of.

In Steve’s Sight, the _fae_ wavered and flickered around him. It was like trying to see them with double vision. Like seeing two people (or sometimes not people) who Steve’s brain somehow knew were the same person, at the same time, in the same place.

It wasn’t super reliable, but it happened often enough that Steve knew that something wasn’t quite right with Jessica Jones or that bracelet Peter was always wearing on his arm.

“I’ve never called out to one, besides Buck, I mean,” Steve told Thor. “How do you do it respectfully? I’m not trying to start a war here.”

Thor hummed and held out his hand.

Steve dug through his pocket and dropped the three pieces of glass into it.

Thor held them up to the light.

“It depends on your selkie,” he said after a moment. “Those in the land where I was worshipped would call by diving into the water when the moon was high.”

…so was that a ‘come back at night and take a dip,’ then?

“Uh-uh. Nice try,” Sam said flat out. “You can’t pay me to get in that water.”

That was more than fair. Steve was looking at a fun collection of old cans and unidentifiable green stuff floating around in the corner of the dock in front of him. It rose and fell with the tide.

“He wouldn’t come during the day though, would he? He’s got work and stuff,” Steve realized a bit sadly.

Sam and Thor stared at him like he was an idiot.

“Steve, it’s Saturday,” Sam said.

“It’s okay. We will call, and if he wants to come, he will come. We will just have to wait and see,” Thor decided happily.

“Wait for what?” a new voice asked.

Steve felt his shoulders go taut and a chill ran through his back. He slowly turned around to find a nun standing there, a dark figure in all that black, in the middle of the planks behind them.

“A selkie,” Thor said kindly her way.

Steve and Sam’s shared brainwave sent them lunging to get hands on his face before this woman called the police. Or the coast guard. Or the priest.

“No one, Sister,” Steve said, laughing nervously. “Our friend here’s just a little confused. You know, pagans and all that.”

The Sister did not laugh. Sam gave Steve a strong jaw, but like, he was _trying_ already, Samuel. What more do you want?

“A selkie,” the Sister repeated.

“A selkie,” Thor said, easily removing Steve and Sam’s hands from his face by their wrists. “Are you the selkie who guards this river?”

It took Steve a moment before his head processed what he was seeing in front of him.

Just as Thor said the words, the nun’s face flickered between smooth, pale skin and being sprayed with dark spots. Her eyes went light and dark. Light and dark. And there was something hanging over her shoulder. Something tall.

Hulking.

Blurring.

Steve took a step back.

“No one guards this river,” the nun said peacefully. “It is a neutral zone and a passage to the sea. Why are you looking for a selkie?”

They weren’t.

Not anymore.

They were definitely going home. 100% on their way home. No questions asked.

Thor didn’t budge when Steve locked fingers in his shirt and gave him an eensy-weensy nudge in the direction of the fuck out of there, however, and Sam’s forehead wrinkled severely at the gesture.

“Thank you, Sister, but we’re not looking for anyone actually, we were just going home—” Steve started.

“We’re looking for a selkie called ‘Nelson,’” Thor barreled on to Steve’s abrupt horror. “Have you or any of your kind heard this name?”

The nun tipped her head to the side and pursed her lips.

“What business do you have with him?” she asked.

“Hopefully an exchange. We bring an offering. Do you know if he’s out in these waters?” Thor asked.

The water under the dock chugged away at its sides and its trash. The nun didn’t seem to even hear it.

“Nelson is young,” she eventually said. “He has no business making deals with a god of lightening.”

Thor dipped his head graciously.

“Perhaps you might, then?” he wondered.

Steve couldn’t decide if he was going to hyperventilate or have a stroke.

He’d come out here, expecting to talk to his lawyer. Maybe his lawyer in a funny coat. He had, in no way, planned on bearing witness to negotiations between a demi-god and a selkie-nun.

This was not in the plan.

This wasn’t even in an imaginary plan because Steve wasn’t a fucking idiot, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“We don’t mean to bother you,” he blurted out. “We can leave—”

“Silence, human-child,” the nun said sharply.

Every one of Steve’s Catholic bones went dead still from the tone. He felt nine years old and like he’d been caught laughing in church. The urge to mumble an apology was nearly insurmountable.

The nun lifted her eyes back to Thor and the shape over her shoulder moved slightly. Thor made a considering noise.

“You have a hero?” he asked.

A what?

Sam made Steve’s confused face back at him.

“What do you need with the young selkie?” the nun asked. “I will take the offering in his stead.”

Thor hummed.

“Unusual,” he remarked, still in that considering tone.

The nun narrowed her eyes at him.

“Is Nelson one of your herd?” Thor asked.

The nun didn’t answer.

“Perhaps a relative?” Thor needled. “Your kind gets rarer and rarer these days, Miss—”

“—Sister,” the nun corrected firmly. “And our kind is no concern of yours, raven-master. I will hear your request. If you do not provide it, then I will not hear it. What part of this is difficult for you?”

“Your hero doesn’t seem to be on the same page,” Thor noted.

Squinting at the shape obscuring the nun’s wavering image gave Steve the vague impression of a head and shoulders. They seemed closer now than before. Almost like their owner had put themselves a few steps ahead of the nun and her black skirts.

“My hero is of none of your concern,” the nun said. “I am rejecting your offering. Begone from these waters, raven-master. I’ll be warning the others of your rudeness.”

She spun around with the toss of her head.

And _this_ was why they should have just stayed at Coney Island.

Goddamnit, Thor.

“No, Sister. I’m sorry for him. Please,” Steve said before he could stop himself. “Just—hear me out. Please. I’m—I’m from the same island that you are.”

The black skirts paused and swayed with the nun’s sudden stillness.

“What’s your name?” she asked without turning around.

Thor stepped forward with rounded shoulders.

“Don’t say anything,” he ordered, suddenly cold.

The nun twisted her face over her shoulder and narrowed her eyes up at Thor again. She lifted her chin and slowly turned back around towards Steve.

“What’s your name, human?” she asked.

“Don’t tell her,” Thor warned.

“Steven,” Steve breathed.

The nun’s lips parted slightly. Her eyes darkened as they flicked up and down, from his face to his toes and back.

“Your _real_ name,” she said.

“Cap,” Thor rumbled. “She will take it. Say nothing.”

“Steve,” Sam cautioned.

“Stiofán,” Steve said. “My mother called me Stiofán.”

Thor threw a dark look over to the nun, but her face settled into blankness.

“Stiofán,” she said, measuring the word’s weight in her mouth. She closed her eyes. “Your offering has been received.”

Oh.

 _Shit_.

“I am called Sister Margaret,” the nun said slowly, “How can I help you, Stiofán, son of sailors?”

Ma was right.

“My friend is a _c_ _ú sidhe_ ,” he started. “He’s—”

“Stuck,” Sister Margaret said. “Yes, I’ve heard. Nelson told my pup. My pup told me--against all sense of privacy, unfortunately. You’ll forgive him, I’m sure. He was upset. He seems to think that the hound should suffer, any reason for that?”

Steve felt uncomfortably like he was sitting in church with his hands out and a ruler hovering somewhere close by.

“I, uh. It’s my understanding that there was an incident with a flute,” he admitted.

The nun appraised this.

“I told him to get a bodhrán,” she sniffed.

“A what?” Sam asked.

“A drum,” Sister Margaret clarified. “I told Nelson he could either have the hair or the tambourine, but both are too much. Too traditional. Borderline tacky. But does he listen? No. He does not. He’s no different from my pup.”

This sounded like a personal problem?

Possibly a personal dispute?

Had Steve just agreed to mediate a personal dispute between selkies? Was that what his future held now?

“I’m…sorry?” he tried.

Sister Margaret was pleased.

“You are a hero, are you not?” she asked him.

“Beg your pardon?” Steve asked.

“A hero. Raven-master, is he a hero?” Sister Margaret demanded of Thor.

“He is a human,” Thor said.

Sister Margaret slowly lifted an immaculate eyebrow. Then whipped her face back to Steve.

“For your name, I will help you,” she decided. “Your friend requires an elder of his kind. Nelson is young and he and the selkies around here are insular. Water folk. They know nothing of the forest or moors, which is where your friend’s people live. I have contacts around with others like him. I’m sure that I can find you an elder.”

There was a long pause.

“But?” Thor asked.

“But finding is not the same as arranging a meeting,” Sister Margaret said. “That is a separate issue which requires a separate fee.”

Of course it did.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Name your price.”

“Bold,” Sister Margaret noted. “I could ask for your heart. Your soul.”

“I’ll give them,” Steve said. “I made a promise.”

Sam touched Steve’s arm, silently asking for a time-out and a quick chat or check-in. Steve ignored it. Sam would tell him not to do this. He was sensible like that. But he didn’t know the true depths of Bucky’s descent after all these years.

Something about his silence or posture made Sister Margaret huff a little laugh.

“I have no need for your soul,” she said. 

Steve hadn’t realized he was holding his breath.

“No. There is chatter up and down these streets that a person is asking questions that I don’t like,” Sister Margaret said seriously.

“You want him quiet,” Steve translated.

“I want him _silent_ ,” Sister Margaret said.

Yikes.

“He’s human,” Sister Margaret expounded. “And he’s laid hands on my pup. And my pup is too stupid to back down from a fight, even one he knows he can’t win.”

Steve ran through his mental list of the shithead megalomaniacs he’d dealt with in the last couple of months.

“You want him dead, then?” he asked.

Sister Margaret recoiled.

“Of course not,” she said, scandalized. “What kind of person do you think I am? I don’t want him dead, I would rather he fall into an open manhole, honestly. Preferably one with a long ladder down, but that’s not what I want from you. I want you to protect my pup.”

Oh.

Now that was interesting.

And very doable.

“For how long?” Steve asked.

“Long enough for this man to fall under his own weight,” Sister Margaret said.

“How long will that take?”

“Given that he knows nothing of the forces he is gathering, perhaps a month,” Sister Margaret said simply.

Oh. Cool. A month was even more doable.

“What’s your pup’s name?” Steve asked.

Sister Margaret sighed and swatted at nothing over her shoulder.

“They call him the Devil in these parts,” she said. “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.”

Steve took it back.

This shit was _impossible_.

“How about I just give you my soul?” he asked.

“His da already did,” Sister Margaret said.

Fuck.

“His name’s Matthew,” Sister Margaret said easily. “And you’re in luck: he admires you. He’ll play nice if I tell him to, which I am hoping our arrangement will not come to. I’m counting on you to remain discreet, Captain. He doesn’t like when I interfere in his business, you know. Now, thank you for your exchange. I will send word once I’ve located the elder. Your task will begin then.”

Sam blew out a big breath and shook his head as the Sister spun around and left them all for real this time.

“You really just did that, Steve,” he sighed.

Yeah. Yeah, he really had hadn’t he?

Goddamnit.

Wait. No. Not with the church hanging over him now.

Just damnit.


End file.
